*1667 Annexation of most of [[Christianization of Kievan Rus'|Kievan Rus']] by Tsar of Muscovite Kingdom.

*1667 Annexation of most of [[Christianization of Kievan Rus'|Kievan Rus']] by Tsar of Muscovite Kingdom.

*1669 Greek island of Crete taken by Ottoman Empire from Venetians.

*1669 Greek island of Crete taken by Ottoman Empire from Venetians.

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*1672 [[w:Synod of Jerusalem|Synod of Jerusalem]] convened by Patr. [[Dositheos II of Jerusalem|Dositheos Notaras]], refuting article by article the Calvinistic confession of [[Cyril Lucaris]], defining Orthodoxy relative to Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, and defining the Orthodox Biblical canon; acts of this council are later signed by all five patriarchates (including Russia).

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*1672 [[w:Synod of Jerusalem|Synod of Jerusalem]] convened by Patr. [[Dositheus II Notarius of Jerusalem|Dositheos Notaras]], refuting article by article the Calvinistic confession of [[Cyril Lucaris]], defining Orthodoxy relative to Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, and defining the Orthodox Biblical canon; acts of this council are later signed by all five patriarchates (including Russia).

*1675 Appearance of icon of [[Theotokos of Pochaiv]].

*1675 Appearance of icon of [[Theotokos of Pochaiv]].

*1682 The ''Sabaite [[Typikon]]'' was published in its final form in Russia; from 1682 to 1888 the Greek and Russian Churches shared this common [[Typikon]].

*1682 The ''Sabaite [[Typikon]]'' was published in its final form in Russia; from 1682 to 1888 the Greek and Russian Churches shared this common [[Typikon]].

The History of the Church is a vital part of the Orthodox Christian faith. Orthodox Christians are defined significantly by their continuity with all those who have gone before, those who first received and preached the truth of Jesus Christ to the world, those who helped to formulate the expression and worship of our faith, and those who continue to move forward in the unchanging yet ever-dynamic Holy Tradition of the Orthodox Church.

1461 Death of Jonah, Metropolitan of Moscow; commemoration of the Apparition of the Pillar with the Robe of the Lord under it at Mtskheta in Georgia, October 1; the Trebizond Empire, last pocket of the Byzantine Empire, falls to the Ottoman Turks.

1463 Greek scholar and pro-unionist Basilios Bessarion, formerly an Orthodox Metropolitan, later becoming a Roman Catholic Cardinal, is given the purely ceremonial title of Latin Patriarch of Constantinople by Pope Pius II; Bosnia becomes province of Ottoman Empire, with an estimated 36,000 families voluntarily accepting Islam, followed by a sustained process of assimilation to Islam.

1480 Meeting of the Theotokos of Vladimir icon in memory of saving Moscow from the invasion of Khan Ahmed.

1484 Synod of Constantinople with all four Patriarchs in attendance, calling itself "ecumenical", officially repudiated the union of the Greek and Latin churches discussed at Florence in 1439, and determined that Latin converts to Orthodoxy should be received into the Church by Chrismation.

1486 Emergence of the philosophy of Christian Humanism in the Renaissance, as Giovanni Pico della Mirandola writes his Oration on the Dignity of Man, which stressed that Men had the free will to travel up and down a moral scale, with God and angels being at the top, and Satan being at the bottom.

ca.1500-1505 the Eton Choirbook is compiled, showing the development of early Renaissance polyphony in England, and being one of the very few collections of Latin liturgical music to survive the Reformation.

1510 Russian monk Philotheus of Pskov proclaims in a panegyric letter to the Grand Prince of Moscow that "Two Romes have fallen, The third stands, And there will be no fourth,", identifying the Third Rome with Russia.

1512 First Christian church erected in Americas in Santo Domingo by Spanish.

1516 Desiderius Erasmus publishes "Textus Receptus" of New Testament on the basis of six late manuscripts of the Byzantine text-type.

1537-41 Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent rebuilds the city walls of Jerusalem (the current walls of the Old City of Jerusalem), including sealing off the Golden Gate in 1541 to prevent the Messiah's entrance.

1540 Death of Emperor Lebna Dengel of Ethiopia; formal founding of Jesuits.

1571 Restoration of Church of Cyprus to Orthodox rule, as Cyprus is conquered by the Ottoman Empire; Ottomans are defeated at the Battle of Lepanto, preventing them from advancing further into Europe.

1573 Pope Gregory XIII establishes Congregation for the Greeks, a committee of cardinals who addressed issues relating to the Greeks in southern Italy and Sicily in the hope of resolving tensions between Greeks and Latins.

1593 Council of Constantinople held, where the patriarchs of Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem confirmed the appointment of Patr. Job of Moscow and the erection of the Russian patriarchate, placing it fifth in the hierarchy of patriarchates.

1596 Union of Brest-Litovsk, several million Ukrainian and Byelorussian Orthodox Christians, living under Polish rule, leave the Church of Constantinople and recognize the Pope of Rome, without giving up their Byzantine liturgy and customs, creating the Uniate church.

1652 School and hospital established in Old Cairo by Patr. Joannikios.

1652-1658 Patriarch Nikon of Moscow revises liturgical books to bring them into conformity with the Greek liturgical customs, leading to mass excommunication and schism of dissenters, who become known as Old Believers.

1672 Synod of Jerusalem convened by Patr. Dositheos Notaras, refuting article by article the Calvinistic confession of Cyril Lucaris, defining Orthodoxy relative to Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, and defining the Orthodox Biblical canon; acts of this council are later signed by all five patriarchates (including Russia).

1689 Great Serb Migrations of hundreds of thousands of Serbian refugees from Kosovo and Serbia proper, leaving a vacuum filled by flood of Albanian immigrants.

1698 Consecration of the first Orthodox Church in China, in the name of Sophia (Divine Wisdom), when Emperor Kangxi ordered a Buddhist temple to be cleared for Russian inhabitants in Beijing.

1700 The Creation Era calendar in Russia, in use since AD 988 was changed to the Julian Calendar by Peter the Great; Peter the Great published an Ukase on June 18th that made a resounding appeal for the propagation of the faith in Siberia and China.

1700-02 Submission of the dioceses of Lemberg (Lviv) and Luzk (Lutsk) in the Galician area of Ukraine to Roman Catholic Church completes Union of Brest-Litovsk, so that two-thirds of the Orthodox in western Ukraine had become Greek Catholic.

1707-20 Grabbe's edition of the Septuagint published at Oxford, reproducing (imperfectly) the Codex Alexandrinus of London.

1741 Synodal reform initiated, when Metr. Gerasimos of Heraclia obtains a Firman (decree) from Ottoman officials, regulating and subordinating the election of the Patriarch of Constantinople to the five Metropolitans of Heraclia, Kyzikos, Nicomedia, Nicaea, and Chalcedon, creating the so-called System of the Elders (Γεροντισμος), established gradually, in place until the late 19th century.

1763 The Jansenist Provincial Council of Utrecht, seed of the future Old Catholic movements, affirmed every Roman Catholic dogma and pronounced the Orthodox Faith to be schismatic and false, signalling not so much a rapprochement with Orthodoxy, but rather a refusal to drift yet further from her, as much of the Roman fold was doing.

1767 Community of Orthodox Greeks establishes itself in New Smyrna, Florida; Ottoman Empire legally divides Church of the Holy Sepulchre among claimants.

Notes

Some of these dates are necessarily a bit vague, as records for some periods are particularly difficult to piece together accurately.

The division of Church History into separate eras as done here will always be to some extent arbitrary, though it was attempted to group periods according to major watershed events.

This timeline is necessarily biased toward the history of the Orthodox Church, though a number of non-Orthodox or purely political events are mentioned for their importance in history related to Orthodoxy or for reference.